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The Pilot’s Love Song Review

[The following review is a Guest Review by author and programer BlackWater]

Story:
The floating island Isla sets out on a journey for the End of the Sky. One of the pilot trainees that enlists for the journey is Kal-el Albus, who is hiding a very important secret. Accompanying him is one of his sisters from his adoptive family as well as a score of fellow trainees. One of the nobles living on the island, Claire Cruz, catches Kal-el’s eye when he runs into her one day. But as Nina Viento, one-time controller of wind, leads this voyage into unexpected aerial fights, they find themselves struggling just to survive.

Violence:
This is where the show earns most of its rating. Being in battle against other factions means that there is quite a bit of violence and injury. There are some minor things such as punching between the “good” guys but the real stuff comes with the dogfights in the air. Bullets are exchanged, planes blow up, people die, and a guy loses a hand. Some scenes may be disturbing even when they don’t show too much simply because the show portrays battles more realistically – with sudden and bone-chilling death. You might want to pass it up if blood, death, and a lost hand make you uneasy.

Language:
Nothing you wouldn’t come to expect in a war-related show. You have the typical series of d-amns and sprinkled b-words. There is at least one moment where a character repeats one of these over and over due to the severity of the situation.

Nudity:
Nothing. No, really. This show is too focused on war and drama to care about this. The most that can be said is that there is an episode where everyone is at the beach in swimsuits and another where a couple characters have to wear blankets while their clothes dry. Nothing is ever shown.

Theology/mythology:
Not too much here besides the usual girl-priestess-witch-possible-goddess thing. One of the primary characters used to have these magical-like powers over the wind and is basically portrayed as the spiritual leader of the people. It doesn’t get extreme with any worship or deep theology, though.
The general concept of doing something wrong and “sinning” is used on occasion, though it bears no weight outside of characters feeling bad about themselves. Some lessons about forgiveness are pushed pretty hard through the story and plot, especially at the end.
Also, the show leans heavily on this myth that the world was created from this broken flagstone or what have you and they reinforce this with the unusual setup of their planet. In other words, typical fantasy fare.

Personal impression:
It’s like a hybrid. You’ve got the love story but you’ve also got this serious war and death. I found the mixture to not work very well because of several reasons. One, the war part distracted from the love part, which left the latter half-baked and even forgotten through some part of the show. Second, vise versa. It felt like the war sections were missing something, but maybe that was just because we’re kept in the dark about a lot of information regarding the fights and what’s really going on. Think of the good guys as the Allied forces in World War 2 and the enemy as Nazis…except you’re not told they’re Nazis and you don’t know anything about them. The plot builds into the idea of multiple nations and even throws in an alliance at one part but never gives much more for the enemy than “they don’t want us here.” This may or may not have to do with the light novel and manga that exist out there, but that has little bearing on newcomers to this show.
Before I wrap up, I must mention something else that myself as well as some other viewers have felt. The show looks to be kind of like Last Exile on the outside and some of the backgrounds could even swap between the shows. The world itself is a pretty interesting place and gives the opportunity for a really interesting story. But all that promise seems to fall a little…flat. There’s just too much vanilla in there for my taste because the developments are predictable, the characters are cookie-cutter, the plot about the main characters both being royalty is extra cliche, and nothing really happens that makes me desperate for the next episode.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a bad watch but it’s just not a spectacular one either. You might want want to skip it over unless you don’t have any other shows you’re interested in. Or you just want to see some planes blow up.

2 thoughts on “The Pilot’s Love Song Review”

Pilot’s Love Song was one of those shows that I wanted to like a lot more than I actually did. And to be fair, I think it had a promising start – it’s just that it spiralled down from there with a couple of episodes worth of completely pointless filler, immediately followed by mostly forced melodrama and some frankly terrible scripting. I hear the film is much better (which wouldn’t surprise me in the least), though I haven’t had the chance to watch it yet.

Indeed it would be interesting to see a different take on it and I have to agree with how the show progressed. I’m open to shows that don’t meet my expectations but I still like to see something more than the “meh” I was getting halfway through.